What does it all mean.....

I have been here in Halifax since February and my earlier blogs have let you in on my active life in caring for the Spirituality Centre. A swirl of concerns, plans, anxieties, challenges have kept my mind very busy, and evoked in me complex emotional reactions, both positive and negative. I now need to step back and reflect on my experience from a spiritual point of view, and, given my role as the director of a spirituality centre, to share what I have learned with others, in the hope that what I have to say will open up for them a space of reflection. I hope this blog is a good way to do that.

This assignment (I had been in Toronto for well over forty years ) is far from what I had anticipated and planned for the seventh decade of my life. After many years of heavy administrative work, I had thought of a leisurely return to what was my deep desire, to teach theology. This would give me time to develop the more contemplative side of my life, to open myself to the gift of wisdom which has become increasingly precious to me. But I am just as busy as I have always been. with many administrative details taking up my energy and my attention, juggling many balls, and occasionally dropping one of them. My memory, especially short-term, is not what it used to be. I continue to be mostly Martha with precious little Mary. What does it all mean?

My reflection and prayer during all this has been somewhat fitful and scattered, but still there are moments of Elijah-like enlightenment., of gentle breeze in the midst of the wind and earthquake. The main point that has come across to me is that it is not necessary for me to understand what it all means. Whatever understanding I may achieve is at best limited. God knows me better than I know myself, and if a continuation of the punishing pace of recent decades is what God judges best for me to help others and become more fully who I am to be, so be it. So I rest confident not because I understand the meaning of my life but because God understands it. Psalm 139 (O God you have searched me and you know me...") says it best.

All may seem fragile, disconnected, and I fail to know whether what I doing will have lasting results. The thread that uphold me and the enterprises close to my heart, the Spirituality Centre and St. Patrick's parish, is very strong one, and if ever it breaks God is there to welcome me and what I worked to accomplish. Within the scope of His purpose, my success or my failure will be a building block of his plan.

At this point the Our Father is an especially powerful prayer. What I pray for is not my kingdom, my will, but that of God. That is the only thing that matters. And I pray not for a supply of bread that will last me for months, years, decades, so that I may feel confident as I approach the future, but for enough bread, enough light, enough energy to carry me through to the next day, the next phase of what the Lord has in store for me. God will prosper the work of my hands.